As a result of the media coverage of Iraq, there has been a leap of consciousness in the Arab world regarding the necessity for freedom of expression and the idea that democracy is inevitable. This has been a lesson absorbed by both the masses and the regimes of the Arab world. The first beneficiary should be the media, which must extricate itself from the position of singing the praises of a regime, and aspire instead to reveal its blunders.
Polls prove that the Qatar-based al-Jazeera channel retains a distinguished place among the public as the broadcaster that depicts the picture closest to the truth. It is followed by Abu Dhabi and al-Arabiya, a newly established spin-off from MBC. These channels embedded their representatives with US and British military forces and kept representatives in a United States base in Kuwait. They also had a presence in Washington to cover the daily press conference at the United States defense department.
All three satellite channels, in particular al-Jazeera, broadcast programmes from Washington with Americans and Arabs offering a continuous analysis of the war and its repercussions, giving the viewer a broader picture of events.
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There were three most obvious shortcomings in these stations reporting. The first and most important was their inability to communicate the stance taken by the Iraqi people towards its regime. We did not see one Iraqi criticising the regime. Was this due to state censorship or to self-censorship due to fear of the regime and its oppression?
The second fault was any knowledge of the structure of the Iraqi opposition, its capabilities and internal relations. This was shown in their common assumption that the future of Iraq was being played out by the forces in the field that is the Iraqi and allied forces. The third dimension is the lack of credibility of some reports, with battles described by a correspondent as fierce, while the same station later reported that they were merely short exchanges of fire.
An absence of context
Concentrating on military news instead of political news deprived viewers of reports similar to those on foreign channels which covered daily life in Iraq in the areas that had already fallen to American and British forces, or those that were still within the Iraqi armys grasp. The Arab channels realised this shortcoming too late, as the sound of guns and grenades stopped.
Instead, they started transmitting reports about the suffering of the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein; about killings and prisons, and the luxuries enjoyed by members of the regime and the booty they had distributed to their relatives. They also seasoned their transmissions with reports about ruling characters and their history, copied from Associated Press and Reuters. Even after the regime fell, honesty and precision required that some positive aspects, such as industrial, educational and gender development, also get a mention. As was obvious from the pictures shown in Baghdad, there was a general architectural resurgence and a great deal was spent on developing universities, museums and libraries.
Both during and after the war, a lot was made of the role of tribes, who were encouraged by the Iraqi president and his information minister to resist invaders. These tribes also sent men to stop the marauding and plundering and to organise the traffic. However, none of the satellite channel journalists bothered to examine the social makeup of Iraq, explain who these tribes were or what their continued importance was. Also ignored were the Arab volunteers who played a greater role in the war than that of the Iraqi army itself, but were only mentioned as anonymous numbers.
Arab channels do not have the financial resources of their foreign, and especially American, counterparts. These channels repeated the same reports a number of times daily and even the following day. At some points, the same report was transmitted every hour on the hour. Despite this, al-Jazeera reporters were able to transmit directly and spontaneously, presenting viewers with professional analyses of the situation. Some of the correspondents in the north exaggerated a little their coverage of the Kurdish problem, then made an about-turn and covered the Kurdish militias incursions into the cities in the north, where elements of these militias participated in looting and pillaging. It was noticeable that most of these channels rushed to catch military analysts opinions, as well as some political analysis.
Many high-ranking officials appeared, exaggerating their estimations of Iraqi capabilities, especially those of the Republican Guard, Special Guard and Saddams guerrillas. Some of them even promised viewers an Iraqi victory over American and British troops, indicating that the invading forces were covering up their losses. Political analysts appeared on every channel, speaking with respect and awe of the Iraqi resistance. Some expected Arab public opinion to change the stand of their governments, if not topple the regimes themselves, and that world opinion would succeed in stopping the war.
The strange fact is that these channels did not hold their military or political analysts accountable when most of their predictions failed and their visions proved to be short-sighted. They held fast to their previous analyses but simply applied them to a post-Saddam era in Iraq. Lebanons al-Hayat LBC channel, however, distinguished itself by interviewing locals and allowing Iraqi officials, Kurdish leaders, Kuwaitis and Americans to express their opinions. As a result, their programme ratings were higher than average.
Images in transformation
While al-Jazeera correspondents embedded with American and British forces referred to them as the allied forces, other journalists in Basra, Mosul and a few in Baghdad described them as the invading or occupying forces. Were the satellite channels right to use a variety of terms, potentially confusing viewers? It was noticeable that the terms changed as the war developed for example, Saddam Hussein was first called the Iraqi president, then the toppled president and the term the courageous Iraqi army soon changed to the defeated, vanishing or dismembered army. While this was a natural shift as the war ended, previous exaggerations about Iraqi capabilities instilled illusions in viewers minds. Some then held the satellite channels responsible for their dashed hopes.
Despite these criticisms, the war showed the medias importance in the Arab world, where freedom of expression has become a necessary priority. This in itself has made us more optimistic, as it shows the Arab masses will not remain bound to the dictates of their regimes or external forces. Intense and bulky doses of the war as fed to us by the media forced us to examine phrases such as gaining victory over the infidels and gangs of international rogues, as the Iraqi information minister put it, and the liberation of Iraq as the American president and his secretary of defence put it. All previous political assessments of Arab-Arab relations or Arab-international relations, and more importantly, the relations between the governing and the governed, should be reconsidered to pave the way for new premises that are scientific, modern and open to criticism and review.
A longer version of this article was first published in Palestine-Israel Journal, Volume 10 Number 3 (2003)
